


Weight

by starsandspiders



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (not much fluff tho), Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Cuban Lance (Voltron), Cuddling & Snuggling, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Gay Keith (Voltron), Gen, Healthy Relationships, Homesickness, Hopeful Ending, Hunk (Voltron) Has Anxiety, Hurt/Comfort, IT'S GAY, Imprisonment, Insecure Lance (Voltron), Insomnia, Keith can be soft pass it on, Keith/Lance (Voltron)-centric, Lance (Voltron) Has Anxiety, Lance (Voltron) Has Depression, Lance (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Lance (Voltron) Whump, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, Lance (Voltron)-centric, Langst, M/M, Muzzles, Nightmares, POV Lance (Voltron), Panic Attacks, SO GAY, Sensory Deprivation, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Sleepovers, Team Voltron Family, Team as Family, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, dudes seriously they are the reason I started writing fic they are a god, klance, loss of appetite, mostly - Freeform, we stan ardett in this house: the sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-27 22:40:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19799221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsandspiders/pseuds/starsandspiders
Summary: Sometimes it feels like there is a weight sinking into his chest.It pushes past his ribs and through his stomach, tearing and tending.Too heavy for him to bear.It’s at times like these, when the weight makes his chest hurt and his limbs heavy, when time slips through his fingers like wet clay, that he feels the most lost.or:The Blue Paladin struggles with his mental health.His team, and a certain mullet-head, are there to help.





	Weight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ardett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardett/gifts).



> wow  
> oops  
> it is late  
> I am sleepie  
> but I write anyways  
> enjoy  
> (this is my second fic ever, unedited and unbeta-ed, written while sleep deprived, we die like men)

Sometimes it feels like there is a weight sinking into his chest.

It pushes past his ribs and through his stomach, tearing and rending.

Too heavy for him to bear.

It’s at times like these, when the weight makes his chest hurt and his limbs heavy, when time slips through his fingers like wet clay, that he feels the most lost.

That he wishes the most for home, for warm hugs smelling of spices and the crash of waves on the shores of Varadero Beach.

As he lies in his room on the castle (not his room, not really. His room is millions of light years away, with glow in the dark stickers on the ceiling and Marco in the bunk above him.), he wonders if today will be the day that the weight swallows him whole.

When he was ten, Lance would sing constantly.

His voice was sweet and light then, always slightly out of tune, but he loved to sing anyway. As he kept at it, he got better. 

Songs of home.

Songs in his mother tongue.

Once he learned more English, songs in heavily accented words that seemed to get tangled in his teeth and roll off his tongue.

When everything seemed to go too fast, when his parents yelled or his siblings cried, Lance sang.

His mother would sing him to at night sometimes, when she wasn’t too tired, and he would join her groggily, mumbling the words until he slipped away into sleep.

He only sings in the showers now.

The water falling onto his cheeks makes it easy to hide how much it hurts.

Breathe.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

_I can’t._

I _can’t._

His sheets are sticking to him, sweat drenching his shirt, and he wrenches up from the bed with a scream. 

It’s times like these he is thankful for the castle’s thick walls. 

In. Out.

In. Out.

His mind fills with the image that wrenched him awake.

Pidge, glasses cracked, eyes unseeing, staring, staring, the white of her armor smeared with red.

Shiro, arms chained behind him, face drawn in defeat, tears streaming down his face, new scars lacing his face and arms. A prosthetic to match on his left. Purple clothing hanging loosely off of his emaciated body.

Hunk, rictus grin frozen on his face, headband pressed to stop the bleeding in his side. It wasn’t enough.

Keith, his blade sunken beneath his ribs, blood running down his face to settle in the hollow of his pale neck.

His family. Keith. Gone. 

Everyone gone.

And him, left standing.

Why is he always the one left? 

“Put a muzzle on him. That outta shut him up.”

That was hours ago.

His cell is so dark. So cold. 

He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face even if he could move his hands from where they were bound to the wall.

He was shaking earlier, his muscles screaming from the pain of being hung by his wrists, from the biting chill of the room.

He can’t talk. He can’t sing.

He can’t tell if his eyes are open are closed.

And he doesn’t want to fall asleep.

He really doesn’t. 

If those dreams visit him in the safety of the castle, what horrors will he see when he falls asleep in a Galra cell?

So he stays awake.

His thoughts are nightmare enough. 

“-ance, Lance! Oh my god. Shiro! He’s here!” 

It’s loud. It’s too loud.

There’s light, too, stabbing and piercing. 

He moans, scrunching his eyes shut and turning as far as his restraints allow. But that makes the muzzle dig into his face, blood trickling down his cheeks. It makes his muscles, which had gone blissfully numb, burn beyond measure where he is hung from the wall.

He lets out a keen of pain. 

“Shit, shit, shit-“ that voice. He knows that voice. He’s never heard that note of panic in it. 

“It’s okay, Lance, it’s gonna be okay, holy shit-“ 

He’s fading in and out. 

Blink.

The restraints are cut through and he crashes to his knees, all the muscles that had quieted now terribly, horribly alive and searing.

He thinks he screams.

Blink. 

The muzzle is being removed, and he hears a terrified curse as the blood that had pooled inside runs down his face, his neck.

Blink.

He is being picked up gently, so gently, and he didn’t think that voice had it in him to be gentle with anything. That voice is all sharp edges and glares, but he holds him like something to be cherished.

Blink.

They’re in a lion. 

He thinks.

Blink...

Lande falls out of the healing pod to a sea of smiling and worried faces. He waves off their concerns.

He’s fine. It was only for a few hours, after all. 

He barely flinches when they say he was there for almost two days. 

He brushes it off with a plastered-on plastic grin and a cheesy one-liner. 

As the team lets him breathe, he catches a glimpse of a red jacket, black hair, turning and walking out of the room.

He can’t sleep in his room that night.

It’s too dark.

The minute his eyes close he feels himself begin to shake with imagined cold. 

No. Absolutely not.

He grabs his blanket and pillow and goes to an abandoned observation deck on another floor. He spends the night surrounded by stars and light.

He thinks he sleeps a little.

The emptiness is worse now.

He doesn’t get hungry much anymore, and the only reason he eats is that he knows Hunk will worry.

Hunk always worries about him.

He has since they were roommates at the Garrison, when Lance would cover their asses and pretend everything was his fault.

So Lance eats.

He can’t afford not to.

Sometimes he wishes he could let himself waste away.

He’s quieter now.

Subconsciously, he doesn’t want to be muzzled again.

He thinks no one notices.

But they do.

He does.

It’s midnight, and everyone else is asleep. So Lance gets up.

He takes his blanket and his pillow. He still can’t sleep in his room.

But the others don’t know that. 

He’s so tired, all the time.

Every task is a mountain. 

He’s losing the energy to climb.

But someone stops him as his door slides open, violet eyes boring into him.

“Why aren’t you sleeping in your room?” 

He mutters out an excuse and slips away.

Lance is very good at slipping away. 

“Lance. Lance!”

He can’t breathe. 

Dios, he can’t breathe.

He feels someone take his hand and place it on their chest.

“In and out with me. Come _on,_ Lance. You can do it. In… out…” 

He doesn’t know how long they sit like that for, while the monsters creep back into their dens. Gradually his vision loses the haze of panic.

Keith removes his hand from his chest, but doesn’t stop holding it.

How did he find the observation deck? 

The boy that is all harsh edges, all flares and curses and anger, rubs his thumb timidly over the back of Lance’s hand and pointedly looks away.

“Go back to sleep, Lance.”

He doesn’t ask if he’ll stay. 

He thinks he knows the answer.

The next morning, waking up without a nightmare for the first time in weeks (months?), he sees Keith curled up next to him, still holding his hand, and realizes that maybe he doesn’t know him as well as he thinks he does.

He starts to notice the little things.

“When was the last time you showered?”

“...you did good out there.”

“Thanks, Lance.”

“Breathe in… out…”

It’s late. Really late. And Lance has been trying to fall asleep in his room. 

To show he’s not weak.

To show he’s not as pathetic as he knows he truly is.

But the darkness morphs into clawing purple hands and biting cold, and he curses and gets out of bed.

He’s ready to go back to the observation deck. 

Except… 

The dream is fresh in his mind, and he needs to know he’s safe.

Just one little peek, he promises himself. 

He expects Keith’s door to open soundlessly. 

And it does, but he hasn’t accounted for the possibility that Keith goes to bed late. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, the door must’ve opened on accident, I didn’t, I mean, I’ll just-” Lance is rambling. He knows he is rambling. For once, he is thankful for the darkness, if only because it hides the blush rising in his face.

“Lance-”

“I’m just gonna go, sorry, go back to polishing your knives or brushing your mullet or whatever-”

“Lance. Do you want to come in?”

He wakes up with a nightmare. Of course he does. It’s dark and cold and he’s so alone, the weight in his chest sinking and sinking and sinking…

But there are warm arms around him and quiet assurances, soft words from a sharp edged boy. 

Things don’t get easy.

His pain doesn’t evaporate.

But the hiding made it worse, he thinks.

Shiro is good at helping with nightmares, he learns.

Hunk has tips for panic.

Pidge builds him a noise machine, so the dark holds the sounds of the ocean instead of the cold.

Coran shows him an observation deck on their floor, and helps him bring a mattress there, for the really bad nights.

Allura helps him remove the mask he had put in place when he came to space, the mask that had gotten harder still after those days in the dark. 

They have sleepovers in the lounge now, sometimes. They keep the lights on a little and watch silly movies and make jokes late in the night.

And if someone wakes up with a nightmare, they're there to help. 

The team comes to know a quieter Lance. A flinching Lance who sometimes cries for no reason and who, on some days, the bad days, needs encouragement to eat, to shower.

There is a happy Lance too. 

But the one built with fake smiles and bravado and reckless stunts, with no care for his own safety? The one with so much to prove and no way to explain? 

He heals. He grows. 

And a certain harsh edged boy, with kind words and warm hands and soft hair that tickles Lance’s nose when they sleep? He helps.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment with any requests for future fics, as well as what ya thought!  
> In case you couldn't guess, this fic was a heavy, HEAVY self-projection. Writing is my way to cope, so all of the things that Lance feels are parts of me. (that sounded weird you know what I mean I'm tired shush) If you need help, PLEASE reach out. You have support and love.  
> DM me at @chebuuri on insta or leave a comment if you ever need help. I'm there for you, loves.  
> Anyway, hope you enjoy.  
> I tired.  
> I go use the sleep now.


End file.
